Confessions of a Stationery Addict: I Own 267 Unused Notebooks

The Paper Chase

Confessions of a stationery addict.

On a shelf not too far from the desk where I’m typing sit 267 unused notebooks. Tallying them up was a little disturbing. It’s one thing to suspect you possess more than enough paper to capture every thought you’ll ever have; it’s another to know it for sure. But despite this abundance, I still want more—in the last week alone, four more journals have joined their dusty comrades, and I just ordered another off the Web.

June Thomas is a Slateculture critic and editor of Outward, Slate’s LGBTQ section.

My name is June, and I am a stationery addict. When I’m feeling overwhelmed or dispirited, nothing perks me up more than a few minutes perusing the Notebook Stories blog or staring at photos of other people’s stationery collections online. Or, better yet, wandering the aisles of a quality paper emporium. Sometimes the thrill comes from recognizing the hunting-and-gathering skills of the store’s owner: Whenever I go to Papeterie Nota Bene in Montreal (and I go to Montreal mostly to go to Papeterie Nota Bene), the proprietor always seems to have tracked down new items that I’ve never seen before but immediately need to own. Or perhaps I’m drawn to the miracle of small differences. It’s inspiring to see shelves and shelves of almost identical items, knowing that tiny details—rounded versus squared corners, slight variations in grid scale and ink color—can elevate the so-so to the spectacular.

I am also a keen stationery tourist. Notebooks make perfect souvenirs, since a notebook bought on a trip will remind you of your vacation every time you write in it. All I can remember of a long weekend in Lisbon is a broiling August sun, the difficulty of finding a restaurant open on Sunday evening, and an insanely eclectic stationers that was the first place I found my all-time favorite pen, the Rotring Xonox Graphic. (That model seems to have been retired—the replacement Tikky Graphic is fine but not quite the same.) Kyoto, Japan, is a blur of temples and carefully tended sand gardens, but I can visualize the exact layout of the peculiar store where I bought some beautiful Year of the Ox cards. And many a trip to my home town of Manchester has been redeemed by a few hours in the huge branch of Paperchase.

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I am not alone in my obsession. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who understand that, in a stationery store, every book has to be examined, every paper block caressed, and every potentially suitable pen tested; and those for whom buying a notebook is like shopping for eggs: They find the size they want, make sure it’s in one piece, and take it to the till. Never go shopping with those people; they’ll be ready to leave before you’ve figured out where the Leuchtturm1917s are stashed.

Levenger Leather Tri-Ring Zip Folio (USA)

It’s one thing to have favorite notebooks—I’m partial to Moleskines, Leuchtturm1917s, Field Notes memo books, and plain A6 notebooks from Muji—but no one wants to be in a stationery rut, so I’m always open to new acquisitions. In this slideshow, I’ll highlight a few gems from my collection.

But I’ll start with this one, a beautiful bust. I bought this gorgeous leather zipper portfolio after admiring the one Det. Robert Goren carried at all times on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The appeal of loose-leaf binders lies in their flexibility: You can add and reorganize pages at will, and carry just the notes you need. Unfortunately, this baby, from Levenger, weighs more than 2 pounds even with a light paper load—a serious consideration for a carless New Yorker like me who must carry everything on her shoulders. Even worse, I felt like a midcentury traveling salesman every time I unzipped it.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

Artemis Factory’s Gear, Two-Holed Binder (Japan)

My tastes in notebooks are conservative: I like little black books. Even when I’m trying to be less boring, brightly colored covers and large formats rarely grab me. But I have a weakness for interconnecting notebooks, the hyperlinks of stationery.

These nested notebooks—three or four A5 components that fit inside a binder—are a great way to combine different functions. This grouping of “impression journal,” perpetual weekly planner, and “scrap diary”—which provides slots to display photographs, postcards, or souvenirs, alongside a space to write about them—would be great to take on a trip.

This setup would be out of place in the office, but its childishness is part of its charm.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

Paperways Compat Notebook Series (Korea)

Combo notebooks don’t have to be goofy. Paperways, a Korean company, makes a number of monthly, weekly, and daily journals that can be combined together, or with plain or gridded notebooks, inside a transparent plastic cover. A clear plastic “bridge” then keeps the two journals in place. This design will supposedly prevent a terrible possibility described on the inside cover of one of the Paperways journals: “If you hold two notebooks in one cover, the individual cover pages of two notebooks could be dangled to make you nervous.”

There’s something about this endless interchangeability that is irresistible. If ideas aren’t flowing, maybe subbing in a new notebook will do the trick.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

Rollbahn Notebooks, by Delfonics (Japan)

These bright notebooks, which come in a variety of sizes, are the perfect antidote to black-book overload. Yellow pages with a very light grid pattern, five storage envelopes at the back, and an elastic closure mean they have everything a Moleskine lover needs, along with a shot of color.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

Allan’s Journal (Scotland)

Allan’s has been making leather-bound Bibles in Glasgow since 1863. These journals bring goat-skin covers, gold-edged pages, and superthin paper to the secular world. The perfect notebook to take along for 40 days and 40 nights of wandering in the wilderness.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

Journal from Calligrane (France)

In the cold light of day, this is a pretty basic journal. The cover is gorgeous, but quite flimsy. I’m pretty sure the glued spine would crack the second I tried to open the pages wide enough to write on the left-hand side. But I love this journal because it reminds me of a wonderful afternoon from a long-ago trip to Paris. Most of the rare papers and hand-made books at Calligrane, a superchic stationery store on Rue du Pont Louis-Philippe, were way beyond my price range, but I was able to bring home this little bit of paper heaven.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

Children’s Notebooks (Netherlands, Ireland)

As much as I admire exotic stationers, my first stop in any foreign city is a high-street office- or school-supply store. What could convey the Dutch tendency to hide beautiful things behind dour facades better than this unprepossessing brown notebook? (Inside, the grid pattern is printed in a gorgeous light blue-green.) And no nation other than Ireland could list the following “tree fact” on its children’s math notebooks: “The wood of the ash”—fuinseóg in Gaelic—“is used for making hurley sticks, snooker cues, and furniture.”

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

“Sketch Book” by Kokuyo (Japan)

Another office-supply store find. Everything about this notebook—its hard covers, its stitched signatures, the paper’s small-scale light-blue grid pattern—is perfect, except perhaps for the slightly too grand gold-tooled letters on the front. And at 179 yen—less than $2—it was a bargain.

Of course, getting to Tokyo adds quite a bit to the price. However, Rad and Hungry, a Seattle-based crew, travel the world scoping out local, low-fi office supplies and making them available as individual kits or through a monthly subscription. $21 for a pen, a notebook, and a pencil might seem like a lot, but it’s much cheaper than heading to Turkey (or France or Brazil or Korea) yourself.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

Muji Notebook in an Indigo Cover by Ranpudo (Japan)

These plain kraft-paper-cover journals are filled with the kind of supersmooth paper I love. They’re also amazingly inexpensive, which increases the likelihood that I’ll actually write in them. They tend to get a little beat up, though. Fortunately, this tendency provided me with a perfect excuse to buy this gorgeous indigo-cloth book cover, which I found in the huge Itoya stationery store in Tokyo.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

My Rosebud (Britain)

This notebook has never known the touch of a pen, but it is the exact same kind that I used to buy with my pocket money from the post office next to my grandparents’ house. The cover looks like someone threw up on it, I no longer care for ruled notebooks, and it feels a few centimeters too tall and too wide for my current tastes. But if I had to abandon my notebook collection, this is the one I’d try to sneak into my suitcase.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo for CREDIT: Slate

But even we paper fiends come in different stripes. Perhaps because my own fixations are essentially anti-social (I am drawn to small notebooks that no one else will ever get to look inside), I’m fascinated by folks who love social stationery—cards, notepaper with matching envelopes, and kits full of stickers and sheets of pastel paper. How can they stand to share their finds with other people? I guess they’re just less selfish than me. Or perhaps more practical: Since I can’t bear to tear pages out of my notebooks, I end up scrawling notes to friends on oversize legal pads or on the backs of to-do lists. In a house full of notebooks, I can never find a decent sheet of writing paper when I need it.

Why do I love stationery? My absolute delight in browsing paper palaces gives me a glimmer of the addict’s compulsion, an overwhelming desire for something I really don’t need. Fortunately, stationery is a harmless obsession—most of the items I jones for cost less than $25—and while acquiring 300 notebooks isn’t a wise investment, it hasn’t put me in financial peril, either.

And like any collector, I find pleasure in knowledgeable connoisseurship. I’m not as obsessed with pens as I am with paper, for example, but I know what I like, and that is JetStream Uni-ball ballpoint pens with a 1 mm refill, Muji Gel-Ink pens with a 0.7mm refill, Pilot Precise V7 retractable rollerballs, Zebra G-301 Gel Retractable pens with a 0.7 mm refill, or disposable Varsity fountain pens from Pilot.

I also know that pens are only special when paired with the right paper. And I am a regular Dolly Levi of paper-pen matchmaking. The unbreakable rule is: ballpoint pens for composition books, reporters’ notebooks, and college-ruled spiral-bound books with university logos on the front; gel inks or fountain pens for Moleskines or supersmooth Japanese or Korean paper. Some notebooks even insist on a No. 2 pencil. I never know for sure until I open up a journal for the first time.

Sometimes, notebooks can be intimidating. How could my scribblings be worthy of the gorgeous hand-made journal I found in a Parisian stationers so packed with irresistible goodies that I finally understood the pain of Sophie’s Choice? One of the reasons my stationery shelf is so crowded with pristine items is that I do most of my writing in inexpensive, mass-produced notebooks. I make work notes in college-ruled composition books—preferably the commonplace Mead variety. Since there are stacks of them in every drug store and school-supply warehouse in America, they’re the opposite of daunting. And best of all, they change as you fill them—they’re a couple of centimeters fatter when completed, and the sound made by flipping through the crinkled pages is one of the most satisfying I know.

But the real thrill of the paper chase lies in the sense of possibility. After all, I don’t spend a lot of time putting pen to paper. I do most of my writing, professional and personal, on a computer. But those notebooks are my life raft—I just know they’ll rescue me if I get lost for words. Notebooks have sprung me from creative funks enough times to convince me of their mystical powers. I feel about notebooks the way I imagine believers feel about their religion: Someone who lacks faith in stationery will never understand how much comfort the perfect combination of pen and paper can provide. Faced with a task I don’t know how to tackle or a story that just won’t be written, I approach the notebook shelf knowing that something there will get me out of my jam.

This is why, to me, notebooks are irresistibly beautiful objects: Their shape evokes the intellectual satisfaction of the great books, combined with the endless possibilities of the unknown: The next thing I write in one might be the best thing I’ve ever written.